How to Start Writing Your Novel, part 2
Step 2: Establish the time and place
Welcome to part two in the six-part series How to Start Writing Your Novel. Read How to Start Writing Your Novel: Part 1.
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Yesterday, we talked about situation and defining your story’s what-if. Once you know your novel’s situation, you’ll want to establish the setting. Setting encompasses not only place, but also time. Where does your novel happen, and when? It’s possible that your situation grew out of the setting, in which case you have already completed step two.
Ian McEwan’s chilling novella The Comfort of Strangers derives much of its tension from the setting of Venice — the convoluted streets and hidden alleys are essential to the feeling of disorientation that leads to the protagonist’s undoing.
The classic Scandinavian crime series by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, featuring Detective Martin Beck, begins with the discovery of a body by a lake in Sweden in the novel Roseanna. Part of what makes this ten-book series so iconic is that the writers never lost sight of the setting, which was crucial to the plots of each novel but also to the development of the protagonist, Beck. Sjowall and Wahloo are credited with nothing less than creating the modern police procedural. As Henning Mankel notes in his introduction to the fiftieth anniversary edition of Roseanna, “They wanted to use crime and criminal investigations as a mirror of Swedish society—and later include the rest of the world.” While the setting is specific to Sweden in the 60s, the story is nonetheless universal.
Setting may be simply backdrop, or it may function almost as a character in the book — as in Pat Conroy’s The Prince of Tides, James Ellroy’s L.A. Confidential, Jennifer Egan’s Manhattan Beach, and one of my favorites, The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury.
When I began writing The Year of Fog, I knew it could happen only one place: San Francisco. And I knew the story of a child disappearing into the fog must begin on Ocean Beach, where the summer fog is so dense, you can see only a few feet in front of you. I’ve since published several more novels set in San Francisco. The moment I set foot in San Francisco twenty years ago, I found my muse. My latest novel, The Wonder Test, a Silicon Valley thriller about high-stakes education and testing, was inspired by my little corner of the Bay Area. For me, situation and setting are inextricably linked. The setting is present the moment I conceive of the story—and with each novel, I have the sense that this particular story could happen nowhere else.
What location is your muse? What place do you know so intimately, you can describe it like no one else?
When you consider the setting of your novel, be as specific as possible. If it begins in a city, what part of the city? What street? What building? Why does the story happen here? How does the place define and challenge the characters?
Assignment: Determine the setting where your novel opens. Write about the place for 15 minutes.
This is part two in the six-part series, How to Start Writing Your Novel. Begin here. Or go to the next post, How to Start Writing Your Novel, part 3.
If you want guidance and accountability to help you start your novel, you might enjoy my 8-week course, Foundations of Novel Writing.